WASHINGTON — Dozens of food stores were still without power Monday after tornado-like storms over the weekend ravaged the Mid-Atlantic states.
Retailers in the meantime reported brisk business as shoppers sought water and ice, and operators said they were working hard to replenish their own supplies so customers could restock their refrigerators as power returned.
Storms that struck the Washington, D.C., area late Friday had caused power outages at 50 of Safeway’s 130 stores in the region, Greg TenEyck, a spokesman for Safeway, told SN Monday. Of those 50 affected, all but four remained open, he said. Safeway was sending out extra shipments of ice to 16 stores in heavily impacted areas Monday, Ten Eyck said. This included outlets in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, he added.
Around a half a million people in the Washington-Baltimore area were still without power Monday, noted Jamie Miller, a spokesman for Ahold’s Giant-Landover division. “We’ve been working around the clock to get trailers out and keep stores supplied with the basic necessities,” he said. Around 60 of Giant-Landover’s 173 stores lost power as a result of the storms, but all of them remained open utilizing backup power sources, he said.
Christy Phillips-Brown, a spokeswoman for Food Lion, said more than 100 Food Lion stores were left without power as storms hit the chain’s outlets in Virginia and West Virginia. “Fewer than a dozen” were still closed Monday, she said. “We had power loss that ultimately resulted in product loss, but we’re working hard with our vendor partners to quickly restock,” Phillips-Brown said. Outlets in Roanoke and Lynchburg, Va., and in West Virginia were the most severely affected, she said.
